The Über Lebenskunst (Art of Living) Festival, at Berlin's House of World Cultures last weekend celebrated this variety, bringing together representatives from many different sustainability ventures for conferences, workshops and talks.

The opening conference, entitled On the links between technology and art set the tone with a talk from Arjun Appadurai, Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. Appadurai addressed the familiar "form versus function" design dilemma from a new perspective. Identifying a gulf between innovation and imagination, he associated the former with design, technology and entrepreneurship, and the latter with the arts. He went on to argue that they are complimentary and conducive to progress: where the arts demand constant creativity, technology provides a regulatory filter, "reducing the range of options so it appears credible and grammatical." Sustainability, he said, pervades all areas of life and of lifestyle, and thus requires creativity and technology in equal measure. It is the new arena wherein innovation and imagination can - and must - interact.

The abstract bent of the inaugural lecture was balanced by many of the exhibitions and workshops, which provided concrete examples of creative technologies to facilitate sustainable living. The artificial lake in front of the building was transformed into a floating lettuce farm, and an installation on the terrace created drinking water by purifying the water from the neighbouring River Spree.

(Image: Natalie Holmes)

An all-day workshop, Neighbourhood Satellites Energy Harvests: claiming energy leaks as a resource, gave me a chance to dust off my DIY skills in the name of progress. Based on the notion that the energy expended in urban environments is often wasted where it could be reused, the day's activities provided an in-depth study in how this surplus might be harvested. We started with a group discussion of where energy is wasted. The answer seemed to be: almost everywhere. From the light emitted by shop windows to rain falling from the sky, opportunities for harnessing this power are all around us. Identifying them is the easy part, though there are all sorts of hurdles - political, social and technological - that get in the way. Neighbourhood Satellites, who run the workshop, currently have an exhibition of working wind turbines in Berlin's Neukölln metro station. The installation harvests energy from the movement of the trains through the tunnel, using it to charge a battery. Inspired by this, our group decided to harness the power from shop windows. Out came the soldering irons, glue guns, tiny photovoltaic panels and circuit boards and, with varying degrees of success but constant enthusiasm, we produced contraptions that could be attached to shop windows and charge batteries using the light emitted.

(Image: Myvillages.org)

From reclaiming wasted energy to rescuing discarded food, arts collective My Villages has been gathering, harvesting and bartering for food and drink in and around Berlin for the past year for their Vorratskammer project. The Tour of the Larder was a culmination of the fruits of their efforts that included an impressive amount and variety of locally sourced produce, from Berlin dry gin to countless fresh, pickled or jellied fruit and veg. The demonstration certainly whet the appetite for the weekend's feast, barbecue and left-over party, and like the festival itself, provided an inspiring and mouth-watering taste of sustainability and a positive, if very different, vision of the future.